Historic Alaska fuel shipment reaches North Slope on barge

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska company says changing ice conditions in the North Slope area have allowed it to make a bulk fuel delivery to Prudhoe Bay by barge for the first time.

KTUU-TV reported Thursday that Colville Inc. says that the single trip carried 2 million gallons (8 million liters) of fuel.

The fuel took 70 hours to unload before it was moved to a tank farm in the community of Deadhorse.

A statement by Colville says that fuel for North Slope oil field operations is typically delivered over land by trucks pulling 53-foot (16-meter) tankers from a refinery in Valdez to Deadhorse, a roughly 850-mile (1,368-kilometer) trip.